2. Hazelnuts - Apple & Hazelnut Cake #2 - Niki Seignit Version

After creating my own version of an apple and hazelnut cake I made a second one following the recipe in The Flavour Thesaurus exactly (apart from scaling it up to fit my tin). Here's how it goes...

Ingredients

This is for a 23cm round springform tin.

150g roasted, skinned and ground hazelnuts
185g plain flour
150g very soft butter
150g light brown soft sugar
3 tsp baking powder
2 large free range eggs
1 1/2 tbsp hazelnut oil
1 1/2 tsp cocoa powder
4 medium Bramley apples


Line your cake tin with baking parchment and preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan oven/gas mark 4.

Method

Very simply, combine the hazelnuts, flour, butter, sugar, baking powder, eggs, oil and cocoa powder in a large mixing bowl.

Peel, core and quarter the apples then halve each quarter and cut each of these pieces into 4.

Fold the apple chunks into the cake batter then spoon/pour/scrape the mix into your prepared cake tin.

Bake in the oven for about 45 minutes and transfer onto a wire rack once it is cool enough to handle.

I thought this cake was delicious and again the combination of apples and hazelnuts worked beautifully. The only problem I had with this cake was that I don't think it looked that great. It has such a high moisture content because of all the apples. In some ways that's what makes it taste so amazing and feel so luxurious on your tongue but I couldn't get the cake out of the tin in one piece, it ended up a bit of a mess. A tasty mess though.

Calling all London based bakers!

Any London based bakers out there need some help over the summer? I'm Streatham based and after some work experience in a kitchen environment baking bread/cakes etc. I'm particularly keen to develop my pastry skills but would welcome any experience in that environment. Please get in touch at sourcherry.sb@gmail.com

It's been a long time

Hello dearest readers. It's been an embarrassingly long time since I last posted anything and it's amazing how time flies. We moved house back in March and most of our time has been spent trying to make it into our home. Juggling work and house stuff has been exhausting hence a distinct lack of activity on the old blog. However, that's all about to change!

I've not neglected the baking, just publishing the recipes. Some recipes to look forward to are...Apple & Hazelnut Cake (part 2), Chocolate & Hazelnut Cupcakes, Mississippi Mud Pie and Hazelnut Pizza Dough.

As an incentive to watch this space...

 

:)

The (Beardy)man can bake!

This appears to be quite an old video but I've only just seen it. It's very impressive!

1. Hazlenuts - Apple & Hazlenut Cake #1 - my version

I have neglected my blog lately. I think it's down to a combination of a rotten cold and a touch of the January blues. Now the weather is slightly warmer and night time doesn't begin at 4pm I feel alive again!!

I've made two versions of this cake. The first time I tried it I didn't have some of the ingredients for Niki Segnit's recipe so I used it as a base and then added my own touches. I then got all the proper ingredients and followed the recipe exactly (see next post).

Ingredients

I had a slightly bigger tin than the one in the recipe so I scaled it up by 50%. This is for a 23cm round springform tin.

150g roasted, skinned and ground hazelnuts
4 medium Bramley apples
Juice of half a lemon
150g very soft butter
150g light brown soft sugar
2 large free range eggs
3tsp baking powder
185g plain flour
50g dark chocolate

Line your cake tin with baking parchment and preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan oven/gas mark 4.

Method

I used a slightly different method from that in the book and it goes like this...

Grind up the hazelnuts in a food processor and set to one side. Make sure you take a good long sniff at this point - the rich and warm aromas of the nuts are released (especially if you've roasted them yourself) and smell wonderful.


Take a big bowl, fill it with water and add the lemon juice. Peel and core the apples. Cut into quarters. Halve each quarter and then cut each piece into 4. Place in the bowl and set aside.
 


Beat the sugar and butter together until fluffy. (I should say that I don't work for Kitchen Aid, it is my new toy that Joe got me for Christmas. Haven't done much baking without it since!).

With the beater still going, add the eggs one at a time making sure the first is fully incorporated before breaking in the second.

Sift together the baking powder and flour and add to the mixture. Keep beating until fully combined.

Next stir in the hazelnuts.

Next drain the apples and stir these into the mixture. It will seem like there is way too much apple for the amount of mixture but have faith! Keep stirring to get as much of an even distribution of apple/mixture as possible.

Spoon into the prepared baking tin, pop in the oven and bake for about 45 minutes.

Leave to cool in the tin for 15 to 20 minutes and then very carefully transfer to a cooling rack. With all the fruit it is a very moist cake so it breaks easily (note chunk missing at 7 o'clock!).

Put a few centimetres of water in a saucepan and bring to a very very gentle simmer. Break up the chocolate and place in a heatproof bowl and suspend this over the saucepan. It's important that the chocolate melts slowly or it will seize and turn grainy so make sure the water doesn't boil and make sure the bowl isn't touching the water.

Once melted, drizzle the chocolate over the cake and leave to set.

When I drizzled on the chocolate I regretted adding so much and I thought its bitterness would overpower the other ingredients but when I tried a slice I was really surprised at how the apples, hazelnuts and chocolate complimented each other (just as Niki Segnit promised!).

Ingredient 3 - Hazelnuts

Also known as filbert and cobnut (referring to cultivated rather than wild varieties) and chocolate's perfect partner, the hazelnut is ingredient number 3.

I've become a huge fan of Niki Segnit's beautifully written book The Flavour Thesaurus (thank you to Jo and Thom for my copy for Christmas). The chapter on hazelnuts made my mouth water and got my creative juices flowing with the thought of experimenting with hazelnut oil, liqueurs and hazelnut butter.

The book takes different ingredients (categorised into sections such as "Earthy", "Spicy", "Woodland") and matches them to their ideal partners. Some are expected e.g. hazelnut and chocolate, but some are more interesting e.g. pineapple and anchovy. It's packed with ideas and one thing that really interested me in the hazelnut chapter is the concept that it could be the finest flavour in the world. Segnit notes that the hazelnut's sweet, delicate, buttery flavours can be detected in, amongst other luxury foods, caviar, champagne, oysters, French farmhouse butter and Beaufort cheese. So I'm now convinced that some delicious hazelnut containing creations can come out of the kitchen.

It only seems right to try out one of Segnit's recipes first - Apple & Hazelnut Cake...

Clove Conclusion & Christmas Treats

I hope everyone has had a wonderful Christmas and wishing you all the best for 2011. A big thanks to those of you who are reading my blog and leaving your comments. It has been a while since I wrote on here - the festive season is always a busy one for me with getting around each family unit and celebrating some birthdays but now I'm back!

The festive season was the perfect time to have chosen cloves. We turned out a plum pudding at my family gathering, doused it in brandy and consumed with copious amounts of clotted cream. It was moist and full of rich molasses, reminiscent of all Christmases past. I recommend making your own - it's definitely worth it. I never liked shop bought Christmas puddings as they seemed to be stodgy and full of dried fruits that weren't plumped up - they were still shrivelled and not very pleasant to eat. When you make your own you can make it according to your tastes and pre-soak the fruits so they are juicy and plump. This recipe gives a surprisingly light and almost gooey pudding packed full of fruit with natural sweetness. Give it a go next year!

Cloves appear in a lot of Christmas treats - mulled wine, mince pies, Stollen, and of course Christmas cake. As it was Christmas and cloves were prominent I made these too - Dan Lepard's Black Christmas Cake as gifts. Instead of making a large cake I made five mini ones in tin cans. The only other amendments I made were soaking the fruit the night before in a generous glug of port and brandy, and the omission of treacle (and this was not a conscious decision, I just forgot!).

I experimented with the cooking times (as the recipe is for one large cake) and they came out well based on the first 20 minutes at 170C/325F/gas mark 3 and then another 20 to 30 minutes at 140C/275F/gas mark 1. You'll just need to keep testing the cakes with a skewer towards the end of the cooking time. Once the tins are cool enough to handle, turn them out and put them on a cooling rack.

Once cooled I wrapped in a couple of layers of baking parchment and put back in the cans (making sure the bottom of the cakes were also covered). For about three weeks I then fed the cakes with a tablespoon each of port and brandy every 5 to 6 days.

I then sliced each cake in half horizontally making 10 mini cakes and decorated them with buttercream and glitter.

This was my first attempt at different piping techniques (I usually use a spoon and palette knife) and plan to experiment with some more soon. YouTube has an amazing amount of videos demonstrating icing techniques. Here's the one I used for the design on these cakes...Flower/butterfly design but I would love to be able to make cakes like these...Dave's Cakes!

These little cakes were a huge success amongst friends and family, despite the lack of treacle! I did go a bit mad on the buttercream so I'd use less next time and maybe make the flavour stronger with lemon zest or almond extract as it was lost against all the strong dark flavours of the cake.

I hope you've enjoyed all the clove recipes. I've now selected my next ingredient so it's on to the next project...